The 'blind trust' of Donald Trump's business is also running his transition team

Donald Trump has named three of his children as well as his son-in-law to the executive committee overseeing his presidential transition team, inciting major concerns about the potential conflict of Trump's business interests and his presidency. Trump's attorney reported Thursday that the president-elect's vast holdings would be placed in a blind trust with his children Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Trump Jr. But "under the legal definition of a blind trust, a public official places his finances under the management of an independent party," Politico reports. "The official would have no knowledge of what is in the trust or how it is managed."

Trump children who Trump promised would be running his company as blind trust will be running transition. Massive/unprecedented conflict.

— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) November 11, 2016

Still, no laws technically forbid Trump from being involved in the Trump Organization while serving as president. The ethics of that situation, though, are questionable. "Now we are faced with the possibility that a son or daughter of the president will turn up in Moscow or Uzbekistan or somewhere else negotiating a deal on a new property that will bear the name of the president, and the full knowledge that the president really is an owner of the company," Trevor Potter, a former Federal Election Commission chairman, told The Washington Post earlier this year. "That presents problems of a dimension we have never seen before."

Trump, for his part, has claimed that "if I become president, I couldn't care less about my company. It's peanuts. Run the company, kids. Have a good time." Trump's son, Donald Jr., added in September: "We're not going to be involved in government."